


High Priestess, pǝʇɹǝʌuI

by Felle



Series: Persona 5, pǝʇɹǝʌuI [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen, Genderswap, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 19:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16708519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle
Summary: “Makoto can’t be the High Priestess…can he?”A new route for the genderswapped (sort of) High Priestess confidant.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In my continuing quest to make things difficult for myself, this story takes place around and during [my other genderswap Persona 5 fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355578/chapters/35631108), with more of the cast featuring here than in that one. Same deal as before: Akira is Akane, Yusuke is a girl, Ryuji and Ann have their arcana swapped, and Futaba is a boy named Souyou here. We also have the inverted versions of Iwai, Sae, Chihaya, Akechi, Takemi, and Caroline and Justine here as well.
> 
> Quick note about the pronouns used in narration: our POV character is doing her best here.

“That’s it? All you want to do is hang out with me in the city?”

Akane sipped her tea while she sprawled out on the bench in the school courtyard. Makoto leaned back on the table and shrugged. “Is that so strange?” he asked.

“Well, you’ve lived here your whole life, right? Doesn’t it seem kind of weird to ask the hick from Kyoto to show you around your own neighborhood?”

Makoto’s cheeks colored, and he folded his arms over his chest. “I called you that in a moment of frustration, and you already accepted my apology…”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m only having some fun with you, Mako- _han_.” Akane finished her tea in one long draught and crushed the can. It bounced off the edge of the recycling bin when she tossed it, struck her bag, and earned an annoyed sound from Morgana within for her trouble. “Oh, hush. You like light gun games? We’ll go to the arcade in Shibuya, that way I can see if Iwai- _san_ has any new model revolvers afterward. Sure you don’t mind being seen with a delinquent like me?”

“I never do stuff like this, my brother’s always on me to study more. So yes. I can think of worse things for my reputation, anyway.”

He declined to elaborate, but lingered at the table long enough for Akane to pluck his backpack from the ground before he could. “No studying today, then. Time for some teenage rebellion.” She looked at Makoto, standing there with his prim haircut, spotless uniform and perfect posture. “Better late than never, I guess. Let’s go.”

Akane hadn’t ever actually seen Makoto on the train, but he seemed like a very nervous rider. While she was content to throw an elbow whenever someone encroached on her limited personal space, Makoto only winced and shrugged away as much as he could given the crowding, looking thoroughly miserable the whole way to Shibuya. He calmed down somewhat once they were out of the station, though he kept his arms crossed all the way to the arcade.

Despite his tendency to fire from the hip and trying to fan a hammer that didn’t exist with every shot, Makoto managed to rack up a respectable Gun About score, much to Akane’s surprise. Not enough to beat her, but enough to place on the leaderboard. “You’re a quick study,” Akane said as she looked around the arcade. “Want to give the motorcycle racing—”

“There’s no line, could we play again?”

“Oh, all right. Don’t try and hit the hammer this time, it’s only a piece of plastic. Pretend it’s a double-action or something.”

With her advice taken to heart, Makoto climbed past Akane’s score on her second attempt, coming within brushing distance of the top ten rankings. The wound to her pride—all the long afternoons spent honing her skills with Ann, surpassed in the blink of an eye—was salved somewhat by the enjoyment of having coached a prodigy and seeing the performance he gave. Indeed, by the time he finished putting his name on the scoreboard, they had amassed a bit of a crowd, onlookers drawn in by Makoto’s theatrics. “I got a little carried away there, didn’t I?”

“Oh, so you got into it, so what? You know that shogi player Yusuke was banging on about? Total chuuni, does the same thing—I guess I shouldn’t gossip about him. I’m going to see if any new guns came in at the shop, want to come along?”

“I didn’t think there was a proper _shop_ ,” Makoto said as they slipped past the line that had formed for the game. “The way Ann described it, I pictured something more like a guy selling stuff without boxes out of the back of a van.”

Akane directed her down the alley on the next block. “Well…prepare to have your preconceptions challenged. Just don’t touch anything you’re not prepared to buy and don’t stare at the manager, she’ll wing an airsoft pellet at your head.”

“She?”

“Hoy, Iwai- _san_!” Akane said as they walked in, ducking under the extended arm of a display mannequin. Makoto wasn’t so lucky and bumped into the hand, making the model gun it was holding wobble precariously. Iwai looked over the top of her magazine, eyes half-hidden under the brim of her hat, and shook her head. “Cops still haven’t shut you down yet?”

“No, they must have real problems to worry about.” Her foot tapped out a beat atop one of the display counters as she eyed Makoto. “Who’s the new guy? Does he have weird shit to sell me, too?”

Akane held up her hands in conciliation. “You know, you call it weird, but you still buy it…anyway, we’re here to buy today if you’ve got anything good. This is Niijima, he’s into revolvers. Can you help him while I check out the automatics?”

“Tch, whatever. What’re you staring at, new guy?”

Makoto started and took a step back from the counter as Iwai reached into a jacket pocket. Akane sighed. She had specifically gone over that point. “Ah, I’m sorry, please don’t hit me with a pellet,” Makoto said through an apologetic bow. Iwai scowled and stood up to pick some of the revolvers from the back wall. “It’s just—your hair is the same shade of silver as my brother’s. Achromotrichia?”

One of Iwai’s hands went to the back of her neck to cover some of the strands that had come loose from under her hat. “Look, I get enough guys strolling in here to do nothing but gawk at me, so limit your staring to the guns, understand?”

“My apologies…could I see the Mateba Autorevolver there, please?”

With their purchases safely tucked into their bags and Akane promising that she would return another night to help out, they took the long way back to the station, walking the length of Central Street as they discussed the merits of their preferred kinds of guns. Akane was the first to start to drift away when she noticed the time on the clock overlooking the plaza. “We’ll give that new toy a test run in Mementos tomorrow, all right? I’ve got to go, I’m meeting a reporter for drinks in Shinjuku.”

“You lead a charmed life, Akane- _san_ ,” Makoto said, then nodded. “I had a lot of fun today, thanks for this. Do you think we could try something else another day?”

“Let me know when you’re free, I’ll see what I can set up.”

She waited for Makoto to head down the stairs to his line, then made for the Shinjuku gate. Morgana wriggled her head out of the top of Akane’s bag and gasped for some fresh air. “You’re becoming quite the woman about town, aren’t you? Drinking with reporters, working at an airsoft shop, going around with the student council president…it’s a wonder you have any free time at all.”

“Is this your subtle way of reminding me that I haven’t fed you yet? I’ve got a can of wet food in there, I’ll open it for you before I go into Crossroads.”

⁂

“You got out of there earlier than usual.”

Akane shrugged as she stepped out of the bar, wincing from the storm of neon immediately assaulting her eyes, and knelt down to let Morgana into her bag. “He was already drunk by the time I showed up, the lush. I couldn’t get a full sentence out of him. No idea how he manages to keep getting overserved, it’s not like he gets more charming when he’s drunk. What a waste of good train fare.”

“He sure sounds like the Devil card from that tarot book, so I guess you were right about him.”

“Yeah…oh, I made a deal with Makoto, didn’t I? Let’s see what arcana he’s going to be.”

Morgana rooted around in her bag for a moment before producing the box of cards between her teeth, and Akane shuffled them as she walked back toward the station, picturing Makoto in her head as she did. “So which ones are left?” Morgana asked.

“Well, the minor cards don’t ever seem to come up, so of the major arcana there’s the Tower, Judgment, the Emperor—I kind of thought he would be Justice, but that diva Akechi already took that one.” Akane cut the deck for a third time, then slid off the topmost card. Her brow furrowed. “The High Priestess?”

“Aren’t priestesses usually women?”

“Yeah, always. Otherwise you just call them priests.” Akane put the card back into the middle of the deck and shuffled it again, more carefully than before. The High Priestess returned to the top a second time, then a third. “This can’t be right.”

“Is Chisahiko working tonight?”

Perhaps the trip to Shinjuku wouldn’t be such a waste after all. Mifune tended to be frighteningly accurate with his predictions, so much so that Akane had wondered more than once if his deck had come from the Velvet Room as well. He was at his little table by the convenience store as usual, pulling a few card tricks to try and draw people in, and perked up when Akane came over and sat across from him. “Hi there, Kurusu- _chan_ ,” he said brightly. “Did ya come by to help me out, or for a personal reading?”

“Personal, please.” Akane took out her wallet and put five thousand yen down on the table. It felt nice to drop her affected Tokyo accent around him, if only for a little while. His Osaka accent was a bit thicker than her Kyoto drawl, but it was still much easier to understand than what passed for _proper_ Japanese from gate attendants or local television hosts. “An affinity reading.”

Mifune gathered up his deck into a single stack and set it between them while palming his fee. “All right, go ahead and picture the person you’re looking to improve your relationship with, hold it real good in your head there, and cut the deck three times with your left hand.”

_All right, Niijima Makoto. King. Makoto. With the motorcycle._

“Oh, the High Priestess card! Ya don’t see this one too often! How’d it get reversed, though…?”

“What?” Akane opened her eyes and looked down, where sure enough, Mifune had turned over the first card and revealed the same thing as she had. “All right, something’s off. My own error I could overlook, I’m no good with French stuff. But you, too?”

“What’re ya talking about, Kurusu- _chan_?”

She bit her tongue while Mifune cocked his head, his coif of blond hair falling down and threatening to cover his eyes. Clearly this wasn’t going to be resolved by mere mortals, she was going to have to file a formal complaint. “Uh, nothing. Thanks for the reading, Mifune- _han_. I’ll see you later.”

Akane slipped into the crowd again, jostling her way through toward the movie theater and the shimmering blue door standing unsupported near the entrance. “Take a walk,” she said, and picked Morgana up from within her bag. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

It was a uniquely uncomfortable feeling to pass between realities, not unlike walking through a cold sheet of suspended water. Her clothes changed with each step she took, the Shujin uniform slowly morphing into a drab jinbei with shibari restraints running the length of her arms, legs, and torso. The thick walls of her cell within the Velvet Room pressed in around her suddenly, leaving her staring at heavy iron bars.

“What do you want, convict?” William asked, looming half a head over her on the other side of the cell door, tapping his jutte against the palm of his outstretched hand.

“A soft word here and there would suffice,” Akane said, pressing up to the bars and reaching one hand through to flick at his sleeve. He started, then slammed his jutte lengthwise along the bars. “Is that any way to treat your guest? You’ll never get anywhere with girls, acting like that.”

Henry rolled his eye and looked down at Akane. “These bars may not stand between us forever, convict,” he said. “The day may come when you are held to account for all this taunting and teasing.”

Akane grinned and showed her teeth. “Oh, let’s hope so. I’ve got to talk to the boss today, though. You mind?”

They stepped aside so that Akane could see Igor sitting at his desk in the middle of the panopticon, drumming his unnaturally long fingers along the wood. “What business do we have today?”

A shiver worked through her despite all the attempts she made to suppress it. Akane took the tarot deck from her bag and held it out through the bars. “I think the cards you gave me are busted. The arcana calls I make keep turning up results that can’t be correct.”

“Can’t they? Allow me to take a look.”

Henry took the deck and brought it to Igor’s desk, where he spread the cards across the surface and turned them all over with a flick of his hand. They arranged themselves in the proper order, accounting for the gaps made by Akane’s habit of pinning up the ones she had already matched to her friends and acquaintances. Only four major cards remained, by her count. “Shouldn’t Makoto be the Emperor or something so that the High Priestess can be a girl?”

Igor shrugged. “Who’s to say? But in any event, nothing seems wrong with this deck. Apart from your tendency to put pushpins through my cards…”

Akane scoffed as Henry returned the deck to her. “I guess whatever you three are don’t care all that much for what I’m saying, do you?”

“Say something worthwhile, then we’ll care,” William said. Akane stuck her tongue out at him.

“Whatever. Thanks for nothing.”

Morgana was waiting for her when she returned, curled up atop a stack of boxes pushed against the theater wall. Akane shook her head clear and trembled at the coldness lingering on her skin as she stepped away from the door. “Did you get what you needed?” she asked, tail swishing like a metronome.

“No, not really. Let’s just head back to Yongen, I’ll read or something. What a waste of a night.”

⁂

Akane hadn’t lost sleep over Makoto’s odd arcana. After all, Yusuke wasn’t literally an empress, Ann wasn’t a chariot, Togo wasn’t a star and Kawakami was hardly the picture of temperance, running himself ragged as he was. She had to chalk it up to symbolism and a sneaking suspicion that the book she’d found on the subject in Jinbocho was a very shaky translation from the original French. Ultimately, she decided it was an oddity within her already bizarre life, and leaving it at that was fine.

She trudged up the last step onto the third floor of the school and rolled her shoulder to work out some soreness. “Hey, quit jostling me!” Morgana said, pawing at her back through the bag.

“You’re heavy.”

Makoto was alone in the student council room, fiddling on his phone and hurriedly putting it screen-down when Akane slid the door open. “Mako- _han_! Let’s go do delinquent stuff together!”

“Don’t say things like that!” he said, and jumped up from his seat to pull her inside and shut the door behind her. Akane snickered, then winced as a bad step came down on a sore spot running up her calf. She settled into a free chair and yawned. “Are you all right? Did you get enough sleep?”

“Probably not.” Akane shrugged her bag off her shoulder and dropped it on the next chair over. Morgana poked her head out, and Makoto reached over to scratch between her ears. “Those last few shadows really beat me to hell.”

“Yeah, same here. My lower back is killing me, I didn’t realize how heavy that Mateba would feel when I’m lugging it around for hours.”

Akane nodded, then snapped her fingers. “Let’s go to the public baths by Leblanc! They’re doing the medical blend today, it really helps after I’ve been worked over like this. Come on, you can do your homework later, this’ll be your next foray into acting like a normal teenager.”

“Baths?” Makoto asked, shrinking in his seat. “Like…public baths? With other people?”

“What tipped you off, the word _public_? Yes, with other people. Unless we get lucky and there’s no one else there, but some of the locals basically live in that place. I didn’t mean bathing together or anything, you’d be over on the men’s side, but I’m sure it’s identical to the one I use.”

Makoto didn’t respond immediately. He ran one of his hands through his hair as he stared down at his lap, then crossed his arms over the front of his vest. “I’d rather not, sorry.”

“What’s wrong? The only other place that might help is an acupuncture joint in Shinjuku, but they’re outrageously overpriced. And they don’t even offer any extra services, the thieves…”

“I just—I don’t want to,” Makoto said flatly, drawing his arms in closer and turning away from her. The edge of his mouth wavered into a frown. “I’m not getting in a bath with a bunch of guys, so forget it. Go without me.”

Akane cocked her head. She had touched a nerve, clearly, but about what? Maybe it was insensitive to pry, but she needed Makoto in top form for the next time a palace reared up out of the void. She got up and went around the table to put a hand on his shoulder, which he almost recoiled from. “Hey, what’s the matter? You’re usually this cool and composed guy, and now you look on the verge of tears because I suggested a soak. Talk to me.”

Makoto buried his face in his hands and shook his head. Akane squeezed harder at his shoulder. “I don’t belong there,” he said, his voice thick. “I don’t _want_ to belong there. With them. I feel like enough of a fraud already.”

“What’re you talking about?” Akane asked. Morgana hopped out of her bag and climbed into Makoto’s lap. “With the other guys? They like to sing off-key, but they’re not _bad_ or anything, why would you feel like a fraud? I mean, unless you’re into guys and don’t want to feel guilty for getting an eyeful, but they’re old guys—”

Akane cut herself off when Makoto started to tremble under her hand. “Hey, don’t cry,” Morgana said, stretching upward to lick at his cheeks.

“Did I, uh, hit the mark there?” Akane’s question met silence, but not a denial. “Mako- _han_ , I don’t care if you’re gay or anything, don’t worry about that. I mean, I check out girls from time to time, so I…I’m sorry. I didn’t know. No baths, then. And I won’t tell anyone, I know Ann’s kind of a fujoshi.”

Makoto mumbled something. “Come again?”

“I said, I’m not gay,” he repeated, and looked up at Akane. The corners of his eyes were watering. “If I tell you something, will it stay between us?”

“Of course.”

“All right.” He took a long breath, then closed his eyes as his hands settled on Morgana. “Yeah, I like men, but…I’m not gay.”

“Uh, you’re losing me here,” Akane said, and hiked herself up on the table to sit. “Somewhere in the middle, then? Bisexual?”

“I’m…” Makoto pinched the bridge of his nose. “How do I even put this? You’re a girl and you like feeling like a girl, right? Being reminded that you’re a girl doesn’t bother you or make you feel sick or like there’s something _wrong_ deep inside you?”

“It’s not really something I think about, but yeah, I like feeling like a girl, I guess,” Akane said with a shrug. “Apart from the rampant sexism, I mean. But otherwise I’m fine with it.”

“Well, I don’t have that ‘fine with it’ feeling.” Makoto looked down at his lap and gave Morgana a few slow pets. Akane remained silent. “Whenever I buy clothes, or shower or change for gym class, even when I open my mouth to say something and I have to hear my voice—there’s this part of me _screaming_ that it’s wrong, that I’m wrong. That the universe just screwed up when it made me a boy. And I get reminded of it every minute of every day until I’m sick with it by the time I go to bed.”

Akane’s eyes widened. No wonder she kept picking up the High Priestess card. Even Makoto’s persona—Johanna, a woman masquerading as a man—made more sense, as if more pieces of an incomplete puzzle had spilled into being. “Oh.”

She knew it was a pitifully incomplete response after Makoto had just spilled his heart out to her, but there were no other words in easy reach. What _could_ she say? She had no experience with this, nothing comforting she could say or do. Akane slid off the table and went to hug him, to at least try and offer that small scrap of reassurance, but Makoto got up and slipped by too quickly for her. The door slid shut behind him, and then Akane was alone, apart from the irked sounds Morgana was making at being unceremoniously dumped to the floor. She hopped onto the table, then went to the edge and pressed a paw to Akane’s arm. “What are we going to do about this?” Morgana asked.

“How should I know? No one’s ever told me anything like that.” Akane took out her phone and tapped in a few cursory queries, opening up such a deluge of websites that her head started to spin. She frowned. “This stuff is all in English, I can’t read at this level.”

Morgana craned her neck to see, then jumped back when Akane pulled her phone away and opened her messenger.

_Kurusu Akane [15:58]: Need a warm body to stick things into today?_

_Takemi Takumi [16:00]: I really shouldn’t respond to your shameless behavior, but I do have a new formulation ready, if you’re free._

_Kurusu Akane [16:01]: Since when do you need shame to be a test subject? I’ll be over in half an hour._

⁂

When Akane finally stumbled out of the haze brought on by Takemi’s latest medication, she yawned and stretched, frowning at the foul taste left in her mouth. She sat up and reached around for her glasses. “How long was I out?”

“Oh, long time, the robots have risen up and enslaved humanity already,” Takemi said. With the world coming back into focus, she could see him sitting at his desk, chair swiveled around to face her as he wrote on a clipboard. “It’s been about fifty minutes. You looked like you could use the rest, so I let you be.”

“Thanks. Blood-drawing time?”

He nodded. “Roll up your sleeve, please.”

Once Takemi had his sample and the rest of the usual measurements, he turned away to let Akane put on her blazer in relative privacy. “Do you have any patients waiting?” she asked. “Because I had a non-test subject question, if you have time.”

“Shoot. But I’m already selling you my extra goods at cost, I can’t give you a bigger discount.”

“No, not that. Although I would pay plenty for an improved version of those patches.” Akane sat back down on the bed and thought about how to phrase her question. The websites she had tried to stumble through on the train over hadn’t been understandable beyond the occasional participle, throwing around abbreviations and initialisms she didn’t know. Takemi turned around to face her again. “What do you know about, ah…people who don’t want to be the gender they were born as?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve had a couple of transgender patients, so I figure I know about as much as any other doctor that isn’t a specialist,” Takemi said. “Why, are you looking for a testosterone prescription? Because I’d have to do a different kind of bloodwork first. And give your body time to flush the test medicine out of your system, there’s no telling how they would interact. Not to mention finding a new test subject.”

“No, it’s not for me.” Akane felt an odd flutter in her gut at the suggestion, but that might have been the medicine. “A friend of mine said something like that to me today, I was hoping you had some reading on it. I looked online, but everything’s in English. And I…I want to be able to be supportive, and know what I’m talking about.”

Takemi nodded, then smiled. “You sound like a pretty decent friend, Kurusu- _san_. I usually have to warn people to be prepared to have their social circles burned up when they’re considering this. Let me see if I have any pamphlets lying around. Is there anything particular you wanted to know?”

“How it happens, I guess?” Akane asked. “I’m starting from zero knowledge here.”

“The jury’s still out on that. Honestly, if we knew, we could probably prevent a lot of grief.” Takemi wheeled his way over to a bookshelf and dug through a stack of papers and folders. “Could be exposure to certain levels of hormones in the womb, or differences in brain structure, the ratio of white matter to gray matter…all we really know is that it happens, and it produces an unpleasant incongruence between the body and the mind. Yeah, here they are.”

He rolled over toward Akane again so he could hand off three pamphlets. “Basically, they’d work with a therapist for a while for figure out if it’s really what they want, who would then they’d send them to a physician like me for hormone therapy while the patient deals with the social side of it. You have to be careful with monitoring dosages and effects, testosterone is strong stuff. It’s basically controlled shocks to the system, and after a few months they’d start seeing results. Increased libido and appetite, facial hair growth, deeper voice, a change in the way the body smells, things like that. Eventually we’d refer them out for surgeries from a specialist. The choices are basically America or Thailand at this point.”

Akane shuffled through the pamphlets. They were about the only educational papers in the office not plastered with cute mascots, she saw. “And going the other way? Male to female?”

“Oh. Why didn’t you say so? Letting me ramble on here. That’s…tougher. Takes longer. The effects are less consistent from patient to patient and typically less pronounced. Estrogen and a testosterone blocker can’t do anything about existing facial hair or raise the voice back to how it sounded before breaking. Plus it’s harder on the kidneys and increases the risk for blood clots. Not to mention the generally harsher social reaction. All the information should be in the pamphlets there, and they should have some links to Japanese-language resource websites. Has your friend been in here before?”

“Not as far as I know,” Akane said, thumbing through the pages.

“Well, tell her she’s free to stop by, or you can bring her. I keep a list of therapists who don’t turn away people who talk about this stuff. Anything else?”

It took Akane a moment to process the fact that they were talking about the same person. _She_. _Her_. She would have to remember to ask Makoto if that was something she had to change. Akane stood up and shook her head. “No, I think I can take it from here, thanks. I’ll leave you to it, text me when you have something else to test.”

“Kurusu- _san_.”

Akane turned back to him. “Yeah?”

“Do you want to take a guess at what the most important indicator for a successful transition is?”

She shrugged and picked up her bag. “A doctor who knows enough not to kill you?”

“Well, yes, that’s important…it’s a supportive social network,” Takemi said, loosely waving one hand toward her. “Friends and family who don’t get caught up in their own ideas and who are able to be there for the patient. It’s tough, you know? There isn’t really anything I can compare it to. So just keep doing what you’re doing, all right? And don’t worry if you screw up at first. Being there is the best thing you can do.”

Akane shifted her weight from heel to heel, nodding slowly. She tried to study Takemi more closely than she had before, without making it _too_ obvious. His hair was long, well-maintained, kept back in a simple and functional ponytail, while his face was clear apart from a thin line of dark hair between his chin and lower lip. His voice wasn’t particularly high or low, more raspy than anything. There was a bit of curvature around his chest, but the cant of his hips made it difficult to tell if they were wider than she would expect—

“I’m not trans, if that’s what you’re trying to figure out,” Takemi said dryly. Akane started and clutched at her bag as she turned her gaze down to the ground. “Go on, head home. And text me if you pass out again.”

If Sakura said anything to her when she walked in, Akane wasn’t paying attention. She went right upstairs without trading barbs, shrugging off her bag and flopping onto her bed to check her phone. A few messages had come through while she was unconscious, but none from Makoto. She tapped the edge of her phone, wondering what she could say, or if she should say anything at all.

_Being there is the best thing you can do._

Akane sat up and started typing.

_Kurusu Akane [19:37]: Hey, I wanted to apologize again for before. I know it couldn’t have been easy to tell me everything you did, but you can talk to me anytime, all right? Or whatever else you need. I want you to be able to rely on me._

She left it at that and tapped her hands against her knees for a moment. Rather than sit and wait with bated breath, Akane stood up and pulled off her jacket and shirt. “What’re you doing?” Morgana asked from her table as Akane unclasped her bra. “It’s a little early for bed, isn’t it?”

“I want to see something.”

On a conscious level, Akane knew her twin brother was a perfectly good estimate of what she would look like as a boy. Same messy black hair, same glasses, same slender frame. But she tried to think of Akira as little as possible, and she was curious besides. Akane dug through the clothes she didn’t use much and retrieved an extra sports bra and a pair of Shujin pants. Once her bust was slimmed down as far as it would go, she tossed her skirt aside in favor of the pants and put on the winter turtleneck and her jacket. The pants felt nice. Maybe she would keep those. Her hair came out of its braid and she held it up behind her head as she stepped over to the mirror.

Not all that different, really. She slouched the way she’d seen the boys in her class do. “Hey, let’s go into Mementos today,” Akane said in a falsely deep voice, and had to keep from laughing. “Body odor. Dick jokes. Facial hair. Guy stuff.”

“I’m seriously considering relieving you of command,” Morgana said.

“Knock it off. Now I can say I’ve thought about it, and I definitely do not want to be a guy. But be honest: between me like this and Ryuji, who’s more dashing?”

Her tail swished back and forth. “It’s not even a contest.”

“Ah, what do you know, you’re a cat. I’m going over to the baths.” Akane undressed again amidst Morgana’s protests, leaving the pants out for the morning and changing into her jinbei to make things easier later, when her phone chirped. “Hmm?”

_Niijima Makoto [19:52]: Thank you._


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t know about this.”

“Come on, it’s Yusuke. A piece of toast could catch on to things quicker than her. And do you really have anything better to do? I’m sure you’ve already finished your summer break homework.”

Makoto sighed and started down the steps to the underground mall alongside Akane. “I’m starting to think that you know me _too_ well, at this point.”

“Isn’t that what a confidant’s for? Look, there she is.”

Yusuke was leaning against the wall near one entrance to the main shopping corridor, slowly eating a jelly tart and craning her head forward to try and keep from spilling any on what Akane suspected was her only change of clothes apart from her school uniform. She spotted them out of the corner of her eye and turned to them, flicking a bit of dark jelly onto the cuff of her shirt. “Hello—oh no, I just went to the laundromat yesterday…”

“Uh, you can come over to my place later to wash that, I’ll pay for the machine,” Akane said. “And maybe some new clothes. You’re helping me out, after all.”

“Far be it from me to deny your recompense, thank you. Oh, I didn’t realize you’d be joining us as well, Makoto. I imagine we’ll be keeping mostly to the women’s sections. Wouldn’t Ryuji be of more help to you, if you wanted some new clothes?”

Makoto gave her an unconvincing smile, then followed along as Akane took her by the sleeve and guided her toward the mall proper. “Well, Makoto didn’t have anything to do, so I figured this would be better than staying inside and studying all day. You don’t mind?” _Because I don’t think you’d make this connection if there was a sign over our heads. I certainly wouldn’t._

“Of course not.”

“Yeah, thanks for letting me tag along,” Makoto said.

It took a bit of nudging to draw Yusuke away from what kinds of clothes would look nice in a painting and more toward, functional, everyday wear, but Akane managed. She truly had no eye for fashion, her wardrobe had long since been pieced together by her mother, and most of the items Yusuke pulled off the racks would never have occurred to her. All the while, she kept looking back at Makoto, carrying her bags as they accumulated, to make quick mental calculations and account for their size difference.

“These are some really nice pieces, thanks,” Akane said as she pressed another bag into Makoto’s hands. “What about underwear?”

Makoto blanched and took a step back. “I’m…going to go and get a sweet roll,” he said, and ducked out. Yusuke tapped her chin thoughtfully.

“Underwear? I just wear a thick undershirt rather than a bra, and there’s nothing particularly fashionable about my boxer briefs. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be of very much help with that. Besides, I’m sure whoever has occasion to see you in nothing but that would hardly be of a mind to complain.”

“I guess you’re right.” Akane took most of the remaining money from her purse and pressed it into Yusuke’s hands before going after Makoto. “Thanks for helping me today, I’ve got something else to do but feel free to hang out at the shop as long as you like, Sakura will feed you. And get some more clothes for yourself!”

Makoto had gotten as far as the entrance, wincing with the effort of keeping all the bags on his arms while they were tucked behind his back. “Sorry to make you come all this way again, I saw someone from the student council and couldn’t think of a reason to be carrying this.”

“Well, here, give me the half with my clothes in it. I don’t know how Yusuke didn’t notice that I was buying everything twice, she must have no idea what clothes cost.”

Akane led the way up the stairs to the main concourse, wondering how Makoto was handling the sympathetic glances he was getting from some of the guys they passed. “Thank you for fronting the money for all this, by the way…I’ll pay you back when we get to my apartment.”

She shrugged. “Do my math homework and we’ll call it even.”

“Really, I can’t let you buy all of this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Akane said as they made for the line into Hiroo. “I’ve got more money than I can hope to spend thanks to the Metaverse.”

“I was wondering how all that yen affects the economy…”

Makoto devoted himself to thinking about it on the train, where they were both able to get seats for once, before looking suddenly toward Akane’s bag. “Where’s Morgana?”

“She went with Ryuji and Ann to map out a few more floors in Mementos. If we can figure out a pattern to the way they shift, we would be able to spend a lot less time trekking and more time fighting.”

“Is that to make it easier, or because you like fighting?”

Akane crossed her arms. “Why can’t it be both?”

Hiroo Station was much quieter than Shibuya, with a bit more of a police presence and generally nicer clothes among what commuters there were in the middle of the day. As put together as Akane felt when she left Leblanc that morning, strolling through all this money— _real_ money, not her share of what they pulled out of Mementos—sent a red blush to her face. The idle gazes of the officers they passed, too, seemed to zero in on her as if she was wearing a brassard with _CRIMINAL_ emblazoned on it. She pushed her glasses up and stuck closer to Makoto.

“Fancy,” Akane said when Makoto pointed out his building as they waited for a light. “Pricey?”

“I…don’t know.” Makoto laughed nervously, and they hurried across the street with the rest of the foot traffic. “Our mom’s family was well-off, so we have an inheritance from her. Between that, my dad’s pension, and my brother’s job, I assume it’s enough.”

Akane wondered how much the elder Niijima was paid to bug Sakura and put him in a bad mood for her to deal with. She held her tongue, though, and followed Makoto into the lobby to dodge askance looks from the doorman as he collected the mail left for him and his brother. “I would’ve killed for one of these after a day of slogging through that bank,” she said when they stepped into the elevator. “It’s only twelve steps up to my room, but you really feel every one after you’ve been run over by a giant metal pig. Had to get a massage just to be able to walk the next day.”

Makoto grinned and stood up a little straighter before sagging again under the weight of the shopping bags. “Apartment living has its benefits.” They stepped off at the tenth floor, with Akane following a few steps behind while Makoto led her to the last door on the left. The bolt slid out of place with his key, and they stepped into a darkened space until Makoto flipped the lights on and pressed a button to draw the blinds. “I’m home.”

“Pardon the intrusion,” Akane said, slipping off her shoes after him. “Oh, thank heaven, somewhere that doesn’t smell like coffee. Oolong?”

“I’ll make you a cup, just let me set these bags down in my room. You can put yours against the wall there if you like, there’s probably enough space to consolidate and make it easier on your hands.”

Akane sat down at the dining room table to move her purchases into fewer bags while Makoto disappeared down the hall. She wondered if she was really the best person to help with this. Yusuke and Ryuji were both more fashionable than her, but Makoto had been rather desperately firm about her not telling anyone else. Her fingers drummed across her cheek. Morgana wouldn’t have been any help, Ann’s idea of high fashion was a shirt with sleeves, and that was their whole team. “So, am I going to get to see this Buchimaru collection?” she asked.

Makoto returned from the back hallway with a very unamused look. He stepped into the kitchen to put on the kettle, then put some western cookies on a plate. “No one’s ever seen it, really…but I guess you can, if you want. Do you like chocolate?”

“Sure.”

Akane slipped her phone out under the table and went into the Navigator’s messaging feature while Makoto worked on the tea.

_Joker [13:47]: How’s everything in there? Any interesting shadows?_

_Skull [13:48]: We’re trying to avoid them, you know! There’re only three of us here._

_Panther [13:48]: What are you and the others doing that you couldn’t join us?_

Leave it to Ryuji to back her into a corner. She wasn’t fond of lying to her friends, not when deception was what allowed so many of the injustices they fought against to flourish, but honoring Makoto’s request meant some delicate elision of the truth. “Well, they’re not happy about pulling mapping duty,” Akane said absently.

“I feel bad. We should be there with them.”

_Joker [13:50]: You two can have off for the next foray._

That would have to suffice for now. “And you don’t have to hide your phone under the table,” Makoto said with a cocked eyebrow. “Also, the table is glass. I can see it anyway.”

“Sorry. Habit.”

Akane started a bit at the sound of the door opening again, as did Makoto when his brother walked in. Despite the warm weather, Niijima Go had elected for an all-black outfit, a high-collared turtleneck over a blazer that didn’t quite cover the scarring on the right side of his neck or any of it on the side of his face. He leaned on his cane as he swiped his free hand through his neat shock of silver hair. “I’m ho—oh. I didn’t realize you had company, Makoto.”

Cool red eyes settled on Akane, who bowed politely from her seat. Makoto hurried around the kitchen counter to try and place himself between them. “Go- _nii_ - _san_! Uh, this is my friend Kurusu, we were going to have some tea before studying. Are you off for the day now?”

Niijima shook his head and moved carefully into his apartment, picking his steps so that his cane landed on flooring rather than carpet. “No, I only came back to get some papers I forgot and a change of clothes…I’m sorry, have we met somewhere, Kurusu- _san_? You look very familiar.”

“I work at Leblanc, in Yongen,” Akane said. “We’ve crossed paths a few times before.” _Mostly when you rile up Sakura and leave me to deal with the mess._

“That’s right. I didn’t realize you two were friends. Makoto, there’s soup in the fridge for dinner later, or you can get some takeout, you know where the money is.”

He gave Makoto a quick pat on the head as he went toward the bedrooms in the back hall. Akane let her tea sit, forgotten, as she craned her neck to keep him in view. “Your brother is so hot,” she said, making Makoto start as he brought the plate of cookies to the table. “Guess you can’t sell a prosecutor on statutory, can you?”

“Don’t say stuff like that!”

Akane crossed her arms. “Fine, but you can’t stop me from thinking it. He can’t be more than, what, twenty-eight?”

“Twenty-seven, we’re ten years apart,” Makoto said in a hushed tone. He sighed. “Honestly, I’m not sure whether to try and forget you said that or pass on the compliment, he could use the self-esteem boost. The scars don’t exactly help his dating life.”

“I could help.” Akane looked back again, but this time to make sure Niijima wasn’t in earshot. She wasn’t interested in revealing that he had a palace of his own, not to Makoto. Well, there was already one that the others didn’t know about, what was a second? “I hope you weren’t serious about the studying, because I worked hard to make sure I wouldn’t have to do that over the break.”

Makoto waved her off as Niijima returned with an overnight bag slung over his good shoulder. “I’ll try to be back tomorrow evening at the latest. Keep up with your work, summer isn’t an excuse to slack off.”

“I know.”

“All right, have a good rest of the day. Nice to see you again, Kurusu- _san_.”

They waited until the door had fallen shut behind him and the sounds of his footfalls were safely diminished before going back to their snack. Akane drained the rest of her tea and scarfed down a few of the cookies while Makoto sipped at his drink. “I guess he didn’t jump to any prurient conclusions about my being here, did he?” Akane asked.

Makoto’s phone buzzed, and he rolled his eyes before showing Akane the message from his brother: _I hope you don’t need them, but there are condoms in my nightstand._ “More that he was too polite to say anything with you in the room.”

“How dare he! What kind of girl does he think I am? Actually, don’t answer that. Whatever. Let’s go see how those new purchases look on you.” Akane stood up and rolled her shoulders, but Makoto squirmed in his seat. “What’s the matter?”

“Promise you won’t laugh if it looks weird on me? Yusuke picked out the clothes for you, after all.”

Akane nodded, and Makoto breathed a sigh of relief. “I promise. Now come on, I want to get you dressed up.”

True to his word, Makoto didn’t try to stop Akane from picking through the collection of Buchimaru merchandise in one corner of his room. “Oh wow, you never even sharpened the pencils so you wouldn’t mess up the graphic on them…and I thought I was bad for holding onto my Totoro plush. Should’ve brought that with me to Tokyo. All right, what are we trying first? Pick something out.”

“I was hoping we could start with something simple,” Makoto said, forgoing the bags on his bed in favor of the closet. He removed a pair of leggings, a Shujin skirt, winter turtleneck, and a simple black waistcoat. “Could we try the girl’s school uniform? I had a thought to ask to borrow one of your extra skirts, but it looks like you’re wearing the pants now.”

“Yeah, it saves me the trouble of having to shave my legs every other day. Convenient when I don’t have a dedicated shower…give it a whirl. Do you want me to wait outside while you change?”

“If you like.” Akane decided to stay while Makoto turned around and pulled off his shirt in favor of the school’s winter top, then added the waistcoat. He fumbled with grabbing the buckle to adjust the slack, prompting Akane to step over. “Here, let me. It’s down here, you just pinch the fabric and slide it through. How’s that?”

“Thanks.”

Makoto turned around, his face burning all kinds of red as Akane examined the fit. “Looks good,” she said as she smoothed out some of the edges. “I’ll let you take care of the leggings, I’ll go and see what we can use to fix your hair.”

Akane stepped out into the hall and poked her head into the bathroom to find a brush, then had to fight the urge to go and take all of Niijima’s condoms as payback for his low opinion of her. Or poke holes in them, perhaps. She left his room untouched, though, in favor of planting herself outside Makoto’s room and checking the messages on her phone. Sometimes it still surprised her that so many people were trying to spend time with her, a criminal, and Akane had to wonder if would have been the same had she been a boy. She tapped her phone against her chin as she thought of how to spend her evening when the door opened beside her. “A-all right, you can come back in now…”

“You don’t have to sound so nervous, you look good!” Akane said as she walked in. Makoto had his arms folded over his waist, and his nervous movements make the skirt swish slightly over his hips. “Yeah, this look works. The whole prim and proper getup. Here, let’s get your hair combed properly.”

She sat behind Makoto on his bed and began working him over with the brush, moving his head to and fro to see what would look best with his hair. In the end, without all that much to work with, Akane made a part from ear to ear she and brought some of his hair forward into bangs while sweeping the rest back. “I had to grab this quickly while Yusuke wasn’t looking, so it might not be an _exact_ match, but let’s give it a try,” she said, taking a light brown headband from her jacket and sliding it into place over the part she had made. “Closer than I thought! Don’t worry, it’s not real hair, it only looks like a braid.”

“Thank you for this,” Makoto said, slumping his shoulders slightly as he relaxed. “I realize we didn’t get off to the best start, but you’ve been so kind about everything…I really appreciate it, Akane.”

_Not getting off to the best start_ had been blackmail and a rather vicious argument where Akane had been outvoted about letting Makoto anywhere near the Phantom Thieves, so their relationship really had nowhere else to go but up. “Yeah. I wasn’t sure about you, but you pull your weight just fine. Go on, go get a look at yourself. I think I did a pretty good job for not being a hairdresser or anything.”

Akane flopped down on the bed while Makoto stood to look in the mirror. She was fishing out something from between the bed and wall that felt suspiciously like a Buchimaru gachapon when Makoto started sniffling, quietly but undeniably. Her arm wrenched against the bed frame in her haste to get it out, and she shook out the pain as she got up and went over. “I didn’t screw it up _that_ badly, did I?”

“No, it’s—I’m not upset.” At least he knew how to cry like a girl, Akane thought, holding his sleeves against the heels of his palms and dabbing his eyes dry. “I just never get a chance to like how I look.”

“All right, it’s all right,” she said, pressing herself to Makoto’s back and linking her arms around him. He stiffened at the contact, then relaxed when she held on tighter. “Come on, you’ll stain the clothes like this and we’ve got a lot more to try on. Or…we could keep hugging it out for a while?”

Makoto nodded, and Akane relaxed her grip enough so that he could turn around and face her. “There you go, let it out. I don’t mind if you cry on this jacket, I’m having my laundry done tonight anyway.”

“Thanks. I know we have the Medjed thing to deal with, but you still took the time to help me.”

“Well, Sakura isn’t going anywhere, we can take some time with his palace. Literally, he’s a fucking hikikomori, we could probably set off a bomb on the street and he wouldn’t budge.”

Maybe the laugh they shared was mean-spirited, but it wasn’t untrue. And having him laugh was better than having him cry. “Now then,” Akane said, walking them both back toward the bed and her purse, “how about we give that makeup a try?”

⁂

Jumping between a cyberpunk pyramid and making cute outfits for Makoto wasn’t exactly how Akane saw her summer break going, but what about her year in Tokyo had gone normally so far? If everything was going to be strange, there was little point in not embracing it. She leaned against the railing outside of Makoto’s building while tugging at her shirt collar in the oppressive heat, heedful of his message asking her to remain on street level while he came down to join her.

“Come on, it’s sweltering just standing here, why’re you keeping me out of the air conditioning…”

There was some motion behind the hazy glass of the front wall, in the building’s lobby, and Akane was on the verge of looking down at her phone again when she saw it was only a girl she didn’t know. Her attention shot up from the screen for a second look, though, when she realized that the face smacked of familiarity. Little wonder, considering it was actually Makoto, done up in one of the outfits they’d made. His hair was parted the way Akane had set with the headband in the middle, and the makeup Akane had bought for him lightly covered his face while his nails bore a clear topcoat of polish. “Hey,” Makoto said, fussing with the collar of his pale blue polo. “What do you think?”

“Look at you, all gussied up! And outside, even.” Akane fixed a wrinkle in his skirt and stepped back to look everything over. “You did a good job with the makeup, it’s a nice subtle touch. How’re you feeling?”

Makoto rubbed the back of his neck as they moved out of the middle of the sidewalk. “Honestly? Like I want to melt into the ground. Kidding, kidding. But only a little.”

“Welcome to constant social scrutiny! I guess we’re not spending the morning in your room, so what do you want to do today? I skipped breakfast, so I’m fine with anything that involves food. Couldn’t have another plate of curry without making myself sick…”

“Sure, I don’t mind an early lunch,” Makoto said. Akane started leading the way to the station before Makoto could suggest one of the upscale Hiroo restaurants nearby, and they settled on Ann’s favorite ramen shop in Ogikubo before getting on the train. “Where’s Morgana, by the way?”

“Ryuji took her to his photoshoot, I think it’s in Harajuku or something.” The morning rush was over, and the train car was almost empty by Tokyo standards, or at least empty enough for them to both get seats. “I think there’s only one more section to get through in that miserable pyramid, and then hopefully we won’t have to deal with another Anubis ever again. Think you’re up for doing that tomorrow?”

“I could do it today, as long as you give me time to go home and change first…I don’t think I want to show this to everyone else quite yet.”

That was going to be an interesting conversation. Morgana already knew everything, but as far as the others…well. They all stood out, in one way or another. “Nah, we can wait. I think the heat wave’s supposed to break tomorrow, anyway. And I’m so hungry, I feel like I’d collapse before we even got through the desert.”

Akane caught the eye of a couple on the opposite bank of seats who seemed a little too interested in their conversation, then glowered until they looked down at their phones. She called Ann a loudmouth, but she really was just as bad sometimes. “Well, whatever. Think I’ll close my eyes for a few minutes, wake me up when we have to transfer.”

It proved too hot to actually fall asleep, and Akane was doing little but stewing in her own sweat by the time the train pulled into Shinjuku for their transfer. Throwing on her black school jacket on her way out that morning had been a mistake, and she slung it over her shoulder once they were walking through the station, leaving her tank top and arms bare. Makoto, too, seemed to be lagging under the heat, tugging at his polo to get some airflow underneath the fabric. “Look, it’s too hot for ramen, I might actually combust once we get out in the sun,” Akane said as they lingered between the gates. Makoto wiped some sweat from his brow and nodded. “There’s a place nearby that makes some great cold soba, why don’t we do that instead?”

“Works for me.”

Rather than get on the train to Ogikubo, they made a beeline for the exit, wavering in the last scrap of shade before emerging out onto Shinjuku’s main boulevard. Akane grumbled and held her jacket up over herself for some shelter. “I hope Mifune- _han_ isn’t working in this heat, he always wears so much black…”

“How many people do you know in this part of town?” Makoto asked. “I mean, it is the red-light district.”

They passed the theater on the corner where the door to the Velvet Room manifested, standing in the middle of the sidewalk with people passing right through it, and Akane shrugged. “Only a few. The other option is sitting around at the coffee shop all day, so I try to get out and explore since this is my first time in Tokyo. Shop’s right up there, I had to drag a drunk reporter here once to sober him up.”

“How would buckwheat sober someone up…?”

“It didn’t, but the place is open all night, so I was able to shove him in a booth to sleep it off.” Akane frowned when she remembered that Ohya still had yet to repay her for all the soba she’d been forced to buy to swing that. “Oh, thank goodness, the air conditioning is going already.”

Despite the cold meal and the cool air circulating through the restaurant, it seemed a number of other people had the same idea as them, and the swirling crush of bodies kept the temperature up enough to make sweat trickle down Akane’s cheek as they ate. “Does it get this hot in Kyoto?” Makoto asked, idly rolling his chopsticks against the rim of his plate.

“Yep. There’s a great shaved ice place near my—well, near my parents’ house—where I used to go when it got like this.” Was it even still her home? Was she going to have a place there once her probation was up? Her parents had offloaded her awfully quick, after all. “Well, anyway. Do you have any other plans for the day? There’s a doctor I know in Yongen, he’s my source for the adhesives and he knows more than me about all this stuff, I could go with you if you wanted to talk to him.”

“Maybe if I can go and change first—”

“Hey, isn’t that Niijima- _kun_?”

Makoto froze, dropping his chopsticks into the remains of his lunch, while Akane glanced toward the counter. The perception Igor had granted her wasn’t as powerful in the real world as it was in the Metaverse, but she could still pick out two boys around their age, tinged with the faint green that clung to Shujin students, looking over their shoulders at them. A couple of third-years she had seen in passing when going home, two more voices that happily repeated the rumors Kamoshida had started about her.

“I think that’s a girl, dude. See the skirt?”

Makoto trembled in his seat, turning and looking pointedly out the window, while Akane shook her head. They were how many stops away from Aoyama, and still they were running into their classmates? “Of course I see the skirt,” the first boy said. “And that’s that Kurusu girl with him, isn’t it?”

“Shit, you might be right. What kind of freak…?”

Akane growled and glared at the think tank sitting at the counter, curling her lips back just enough to show her teeth. They got the message and turned around, hastily leaving some money for their meals and hurrying out. She didn’t even have to pantomime going for her knife. “What are the odds,” she said through a grumble. “Nine million people in this city and we run into them. Sorry, I figured this would be far enough from school that—Mako- _han_? They turned tail, it’s fine now.”

It didn’t look fine. His eyeliner was smudged, and he was still shaking so badly that Akane wondered if he might start rattling the seat. When he spoke, his voice was so faint that Akane had to lean in to hear it. “I know it’s an imposition, but could we maybe switch clothes? Please?”

_Not to mention the generally harsher social reaction_. Takemi’s words bounced around in her head. “Yeah, all right, I’ll take the skirt and you can use my pants and jacket. Come on.”

Akane dragged him into the women’s bathroom, a single stall by some mercy, and locked it behind her. Makoto went to the sink while Akane worked her pants off, all but dunking his head into the stream of water through heavy breaths. “Stupid, this was so stupid…”

She almost tried to say that being the subject of rumors wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but Akane held her tongue. When Makoto straightened up again, all of his makeup was gone and his hair was back to normal, his headband left on the side of the sink. He shuffled off his skirt as quickly as he could and almost threw it into Akane’s hand in favor of the offered pants. They weren’t a great fit, but any warps in the pattern near the waist were quickly covered by throwing on Akane’s jacket, also a bit small. “Thanks,” he said thickly. “I’ll get these back to you tomorrow.”

“Listen, you can’t let a couple of geniuses like that discourage you, Takemi- _sensei_ said—”

“Just forget it,” Makoto said with a false, forced cheer. Akane frowned. “The clothes, the makeup, everything I told you, all of it. I’ll pay you back for everything tomorrow when I return these. But please, forget it. This was stupid anyway. Let me know when you want to deal with Sakura’s palace.”

He left while Akane was still putting on the skirt. She swore over and over under her breath, took the headband and tucked it into her purse, then stepped back into the shop proper. Makoto was already gone, having abandoned their meals. Akane left the money for their food on the table, went out into the heat again, and looked around. Lots of people, none of them Makoto. She sighed. There wasn’t much point in hanging around, she supposed, and made her way back to the station while playing with her tarot cards. At the last crosswalk before the station, she pulled the High Priestess card, having forgotten to pin it up in her room after all this time, and studied it. Nothing looked all that unusual, apart from the fact that it came up inverted, but its shadow on the pavement showed two small holes, as if it had been shot through and through. Looking at it with her third eye, as well, produced the same appearance, along with blood around the edges.

“Why do I keep fucking things up when I try to help?”

⁂

Akane was beginning to notice that the palaces tended to get repetitive as they drew closer to the treasure. The castle had its tower floors, the bank’s basement was one large rotary lock, and now the pyramid was throwing little switchbacks at them, forcing them to backtrack several times to activate walkways made of light. The hope that they were nearly at the end was enough to keep her going, though she and the others were starting to flag with the effort of getting to the summit. Pressing up to a corner, Akane looked down the next hall and saw one prowling shadow, moving about with its unsteady lope and dripping black ooze from all over its body.

“It’ll be a strong one…no, a pack,” she said, tapping into her second sight. “A trio of Anzu. King, hit them with a nuclear sweep and we can wrap this up in a minute.”

“Right. On your command.”

She looked back at Makoto, wrapped up in his leather raider gear that had to have been cooking him from the inside out on the ride over, and stifled a frown. He had barely spoken at all since their debacle in Shinjuku the day before, remaining silent in the meeting and through most of their trek into the pyramid, and even the others had noticed, shooting concerned looks his way, then to her when those went unanswered. All she could do was shrug.

The shadow came as close as it was going to, paused, and began to turn away to start its circuit again when Akane leapt out from behind cover and jumped onto the shadow’s shoulders, knife in hand. It panicked and tried to shake her off as her knife came down on its mask, breaking through to the material underneath. She jumped back before it could collapse under her, landing between Makoto and Ann as three Anzu burst from the fluttering wrappings. “Go!”

“Johanna—” Makoto began, but the motorcycle never appeared. Akane turned to where he was trying to pull off his mask, but it remained firmly on his face and solid rather than dissolving in a wreath of flame. “What?”

“Come on, I don’t have any nuclear skills on me right now,” Akane said, rolling her hand to try and hurry him along. Makoto tugged at his mask again, but his fingers slipped away from the edges with a pained cry. “King!”

The Anzu had recovered from the ambush and were taking flight, putting them out of easy melee range. “Damn it all…Panther, get them bunched up so Skull can shoot them down!”

Ann pumped her shotgun and took aim while Ryuji snapped off a few strafing shots to herd all three together. One shell came booming out of the barrel, scattering shot all over the hallway and hitting two of the Anzu. They came crashing down, easy fodder for Ryuji’s submachine gun, while the third swept down in a screaming dive toward Makoto. He gave up trying to pull his mask away and grabbed his revolver instead, aiming and squeezing the trigger and producing nothing to show for it. The hammer clicked uselessly, and he wound back to throw the whole gun when the Anzu crashed into him, sinking its talons into his gut and knocking him to the ground. His breath raced out in a gurgle of blood as he batted blindly at the shadow, punching its face with his brass knuckles until Akane shot it through the neck. It collapsed beside him, falling still as it took another three rounds before dissolving into sludge.

“This was supposed to be an easy kill,” Akane said through a growl. “Panther, get him patched up.”

Ryuji’s mask dissolved without issue, leaving Casanova hovering over him and spreading light across Makoto’s body. The wounds in his gut closed, leaving rips in his outfit over unblemished skin. They allowed him a moment to catch his breath, and then Yusuke helped him up. “What happened? Johanna’s been screwy all day, now she just doesn’t want to come out at all? And your Mateba?” Akane asked.

Makoto stood on shaky feet and tried to manifest his persona again while Morgana retrieved his revolver. “Well, it’s loaded,” she said, squeezing the trigger and firing off a round between Akane’s legs that ricocheted down the hall.

“Watch it!”

“It’s not…it’s not working,” Makoto said. His mask simply stayed in place without becoming Johanna. Morgana returned his gun, and it too did nothing but click in his hand when he tried to fire it. “What’s going on? Ugh, my head…”

Abandoning his rebellion couldn’t have helped, Akane thought. “We can figure that out later, right now we’re too close to the treasure to leave for the day. I’ve got coffee for whoever needs the boost, when we get going again it’ll be Mona up with us, Fox and King in the back.”

Yusuke had to swap in for Ann during the final stretch, but they were able to make it to the summit all the same, leaving nothing to do but physically get into Sakura’s room and deliver the calling card. Not a minute too soon, if Makoto’s deteriorating condition was anything to go by. He was holding his head in his hands, stumbling after them as they walked, unable to do anything more than carry some of their extra gear.

“All right, then we’ll have to get in touch with Souyou- _kun_ to get into his room, that shouldn’t…” Ryuji trailed off as he looked past Akane. “King, your clothes!”

Sure enough, the leather and spiked shoulder pads were gone, replaced by the button-up shirt and slacks he had been wearing when they met up at the café. The mask remained, though, shimmering around the edges. “What’s going on with me?” he asked no one in particular, stepping backward and getting too close to the main staircase for comfort. He blinked away tears under his mask. “What’s going on? Why am I so broken? _Why_?”

“Hoy, take a breath, man,” Ann said, edging closer in case she had to catch him mid-fall. Makoto tried again to remove his mask, digging his fingers between his skin and the dull iron until there were thin lines of blood mingling with the tear stains on his face. “Dude, stop!”

The mask came free with an awful, blood-curdling rip, leaving Makoto’s face covered in red as it was during his awakening. It hit the stone floor with a _clang_ before burning up in blue flames. Johanna manifested in a burst of brilliant light and energy, throwing all of them back while Makoto teetered at the top of the stairs. Ryuji’s whip cracked out and wrapped around his waist, pulling him back to safety for the moment as they all got back to their feet.

“Look who decided to show up,” Akane said. Johanna’s engine revved angrily, and she kicked some debris toward the motorcycle in response. The air crackled as it did before one of Makoto’s attacks. Akane’s eyes widened and she touched her mask. “Thoth!”

Her persona changed just as the air erupted around her, leaving her untouched while nuclear fire swept through the main corridor. When the smoke and dust cleared, everyone else was on the ground, unable to avoid the blast in such close quarters. Makoto scurried back until he was against one of the side walls, breathing heavily and wiping the blood from his eyes. “Johanna?”

“Get a grip on your persona!” Akane shouted. “She could bring down the whole place with those attacks!”

“I don’t know what’s happening! Johanna, stop, please…”

The bike’s back wheel squealed against the floor as it turned in place, toward Makoto. Another explosion rocked the pyramid around them, then a third and fourth, with smoke filtering out from underneath the doors nearby. One of the stones from the ceiling came down beside Yusuke’s hand and burst into a fine mist. Akane aimed her gun at Johanna’s fuel tank, hoping desperately that she might stop functioning without its petrol, but each and every shot glanced off the metal without so much as a dent. A much smaller explosion boomed out underneath Makoto, launching him into the air and lengthwise onto Johanna’s seat. Another rev of her engine kicked up the dust that had settled around them, and Akane couldn’t take the risk of firing blindly into the cloud. She changed her persona to her own Anzu to blow it away, and by the time it dissipated, they were gone.

“King!” Akane said once she had gotten everyone back on their feet, taking a step toward the stairs. No response, not even the sound of Johanna’s engine. “ _Makoto_!”


	3. Chapter 3

“He ain’t here, Joker.”

Akane swore up a storm, then turned back to Ann. It wasn’t her fault, she shouldn’t have been wearing her anger so openly, but she was well and truly exhausted by now. Their search of the pyramid had turned up nothing, and judging from the silence on the Navigator chat, Ryuji, Yusuke and Morgana weren’t having any more luck in the nearby town. There was no way they would be able to search the entire desert around them, not with the way night was beginning to fall as time passed in the real world. Akane shrugged off her coat and held it under her arm as they walked out of the pyramid. The guilt gnawed at her, posing a string of what-ifs just to wear her down. What if she had gone back to his apartment the day before, what if she hadn’t pushed him so hard…she shook her head clear. The only salve for her guilt would be finding Makoto, but they were all at their limit.

“I know. I just…fuck!”

Akane fired her remaining rounds into the nearest sand dune, kicking up little puffs that fell back into the expanse around them. The door to the Velvet Room stood nearby, invisible to everyone but her, its bars twisting slightly in the cooling air. “Call the others back here, we can’t stay any longer,” Akane said, and went down the rest of the steps. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

She was shivering by the time she emerged in her cell, cursing the thin jinbei for not providing more warmth in the cold room. Henry and William turned her way, looming over her as she dropped to her knees.

“You overextended yourself,” Henry said gently, reaching through the bars to lay his hand on her head. Nothing in her felt like she deserved the comfort, but she took it all the same, holding onto one of his pants legs as she slumped against the bars. “You shouldn’t be in our world for so long.”

“Yeah, what good are you to anyone if you tire yourself out like this?” William asked.

She didn’t have the energy to snark back. “Please,” Akane said as she looked up at them, “I just want to find my friend. His persona went berserk and carried him off. Where is he?”

The twins glanced at one another. It was a move she recognized, so much like the wordless little language she and Akira had once shared, but not one she could decipher. William jerked his head toward the middle of the room, toward Igor. His head cocked in curiosity. “You had a thief stolen away, then…the irony is palpable,” he said in his unsettling, sonorous voice. Akane pursed her lips and bowed her head in supplication. If they wanted her to kowtow, then she would. Just this once. “Quite the predicament, all the same. Where do shadows go, I wonder?”

“Palaces? Mementos?”

Igor nodded once, then snapped his fingers. Akane’s phone chirped in her pocket with the sound she’d assigned to the Navigator. She almost tossed it across the room in her haste to get it out and tapped through the screens with shaking hands. The pleasant little voice chimed out as she looked through the list of destinations: _“A new area has been confirmed in the depths.”_

Her map of Mementos updated, showing a new region jutting off of Chemdah. Akane clicked on it and received only static rather than even the outline of a map. “What does this say? Makoto’s Redoubt? First his brother, now him…thank you. I guess it’d be too much to ask to get a recharge so we can go there right now?”

“Patience is a virtue,” Igor said as Akane stood up. “All the same, you shouldn’t tarry. This world isn’t meant for humans.”

The others were waiting at the base of the pyramid when she returned, sitting inside the bus to make use of the climate control. Without Makoto, she was the closest thing to a licensed driver they had, forcing her into the driver’s seat. Morgana’s engine idled as Akane rested her head against the steering wheel for a moment. “I think I know where he is.”

“Please don’t keep us in suspense,” Yusuke said, fanning herself in the passenger seat.

“Mementos just grew another area, right off the third level. A redoubt. Basically an intermediate step between someone having their own room in Mementos and ruling a palace. Johanna is technically a shadow, and considering how strong she is already, I think she was able to carve out a whole region now that Makoto isn’t holding the reins. I know we’re all spent, but we can go first thing in the morning.”

The exit point was an hour’s drive south, and Akane put Morgana in gear before they could linger any longer. “But _why_ did Johanna go crazy like that?” Ryuji asked from the second row of seats. “Could any of our personas do the same?”

Akane gripped harder at the steering wheel, prompting a discontented hum from the engine. Based on how the palaces had been so reflective of their rulers so far, she doubted she would be able to keep Makoto’s confidence for long once they arrived. “All right, I was asked not to tell you this, but I need about five uninterrupted minutes to explain.”

And explain she did, as best she could, from Makoto’s confession to the disaster the previous day had become. “So that’s…what I think happened,” Akane said once she had gone over everything. “Shutting down like that messed up Johanna, which made her go berserk.”

“Poor Makoto,” Ann said, leaning forward on the front seats between Akane and Yusuke. “And we’ve been using _King_ all this time…I wish we’d known.”

“Indeed, that must be a painful burden to carry,” Yusuke said. “Is that why you were buying two of everything I picked out for you that day when the three of us went shopping?”

“You knew?”

“Give me a little credit.”

“All right, so should we meet at Shibuya Station at eight or so?” Ryuji asked. “Yusuke, do you want to stay over at my place so we can go early? I know my place is closer than Kosei.”

“Yes, that sounds fine.”

It was the longest the drive through Sakura’s heart had ever felt, and by the time they emerged into the real world in the Yongen backstreets, night had fallen. “It’s that late already?” Akane asked when she checked her phone. “The three of you should hurry back to the station, the last train’s going to leave soon. I’ll get in touch in the morning.”

They departed with only perfunctory goodbyes, leaving Akane and Morgana to trudge back to Leblanc. “For once you won’t have to tell me to go to sleep,” Akane said as they passed the grocery store. “I feel like I’m going to pass out as soon as my head hits the pillow.”

“How can you sleep at a time like this?” Morgana asked incredulously, trotting beside Akane as they rounded the corner to their alley. “What kind of leader are you?”

That stung deeper than she thought it would. Akane’s hands balled into fists, then relaxed. Deep breaths. “The kind that knows rushing into danger on no sleep would only get people killed,” she bit back. “I didn’t say that I was going to sleep _easy_ , only that I was going to. Next time a persona goes off the rails and kidnaps one of us, you can dictate the response, how about that? Now come on, I’ve got a can of wet food behind the counter. Hopefully there won’t be any customers to make a racket…”

She had no such luck. Leblanc was still open for business when Akane walked in, with two customers at the counter. They just so happened to be the two people that she wanted to see least at that very moment. Niijima Go shot up from his slump at the sound of the bell over the door, eyes fixing on her right away. Behind him, Akechi Mitsue leaned back to see who had come in, flashing her a restrained smile. “Hello, Kurusu- _san_ ,” she said, then looked at the clock over the bar. “You’re back late.”

“My part-time job ran long.” She had to keep things casual and not let on that she knew anything was amiss. As much as it galled her to be nice with the smug little third-year playing at detective and Phantom Thief analyst, there wasn’t much choice at the moment. “I’m surprised there are still any customers at this hour, now’s about the time when Soji- _san_ gets on me to wipe down the tables and wash the dishes.”

Sakura shot her a look from behind the counter as he set a plate of curry in front of Niijima, who ignored it in favor of trying to look past her, at the door. Hoping that Makoto would be behind her, no doubt. “Kurusu, have you seen my brother today? I can’t get in touch with him, my calls and texts won’t go through to his phone. Even the emails are bouncing back.”

The one day he decided not to be a workaholic, Akane thought bitterly. She put on a mask of concern and took a seat at the end of the counter, where Morgana could hop into her lap and give her an excuse for her fidgeting. Sakura spooned some leftover curry onto another plate for her while Akane took out her phone. “Mako- _han_? I haven’t seen him today, no…” She quickly tapped away from the map of Mementos and made a show of scrolling through her messages. Akechi’s eyebrow quirked, but she said nothing. “The last I heard from him was when we went for soba yesterday.”

“He didn’t say anything about what he’d be doing today?” Niijima asked. His voice was openly desperate now, almost pleading for any scrap of information, and Akane squirmed under his scrutiny. This was far from how she would have liked to be the object of his attentions, but what was there to do? They’d have her committed if she started shooting off at the mouth about shadows and the cognitive world. Niijima slumped in his seat and winced as he strained the scars on his neck. “Anything?”

“You’ll make yourself sick like this,” Sakura said, and pushed the plate closer to him. It seemed that they had called a ceasefire in their little cold war for the moment, having found a common thread of concern for their wards. “Go on, eat. It’s on the house. Don’t have any mind to charge someone who looks like they’re about to pull an all-nighter, but I can’t let you do that on an empty stomach.”

“Thank you, Sakura- _san_.” He took a few weak bites.

Akane was acutely aware of the sidelong look she was getting from Akechi, and she didn’t like it. Even if she was only acting like a detective, it wouldn’t take much to suss out a few too many guilty expressions. She finished her dinner quickly and stood up fast enough to make Morgana yelp. “Thanks for the meal. I got pretty banged up moving boxes around and whatnot, so I’m going to bed. I’ll do the dishes later. And hey, Niijima- _san_ …I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, doing her best to sound sure when not even she knew the truth of it. “Teenagers stay out all the time, maybe his phone’s just dead or something.”

“I really hope you’re right, Kurusu- _san_.”

Each step up to her room was another twinge in her overtaxed legs, and Akane only barely remembered to kick off her shoes before falling onto her bed, not a care for the lumpy spot in the middle that kept her up most nights. She took her phone from her pocket and went back into the Navigator.

“We can’t,” Morgana said from her table. “Not now.”

“I know, I’m not going anywhere.” She opened the chat function, then paused to think of what she could possibly say.

_Joker [22:49]: I don’t even know if you still have your phone right now, but we’re going to get you out of there, all right? We’ll be there first thing in the morning. And—I’m sorry, but I had to give up some information to the others about why this happened. Why Johanna went rogue. But that’s something we can worry about later, once you’re back here with us. They’re supportive, by the way._

She decided against mentioning his brother downstairs, halfway out of his mind with worry. There was no reason to lay that out there. Akane sat up to take off her shirt, then stiffened up at the sound of footsteps on her stairs. “I’m changing,” she said, wondering how quickly she could have a curtain or something of the sort delivered.

Her warning didn’t deter Akechi. If anything, it made her take the remaining stairs faster, only to see Akane sitting on her bed in a tank top. “Welcome to my humble abode,” she said dryly.

“Pardon the intrusion.” Akechi’s voice was too chipper, too detached from the tension in the shop beneath them. Her steps toward the bed were slow and deliberate, long enough for her to take in everything about the room, from the shelf of knickknacks to her work desk with the busted laptop on it. Akane groaned inwardly when she leaned over the desk and picked up one of the lock picks she had left lying out. “These are illegal, you know.”

“So arrest me, it’d make my night.” Akane flopped back on her bed and stared at the ceiling. “Did you need something, Akechi- _san_?”

Rather than reply like a normal person, Akechi came right up to the side of the bed and leaned forward so that she was right above Akane. They looked at one another for an interminably long moment, each trying to read the other, until Akane glowered. “Back. Up.”

She did so, giving Akane room to sit up as Morgana trotted over to try and run interference, then offered a hand. Akane took it and let Akechi pull her back to her feet. “My apologies,” Akechi said sweetly. “I just thought I might ask again if there’s anything you know about where Ma- _kun_ might be. You can see how worried Go- _san_ is.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that. Give me a little space, would you?”

Akechi’s definition of _a little space_ constituted a single step backward. “Like I said, I don’t know where Makoto is. Probably out acting like a teenager. I know I would be too if I didn’t have a curfew.”

“That’s right, you’re on probation…” Akane cleared her work desk of any incriminating lock picks while Akechi examined all the little curios she’d picked up from around the city. “You’re probably right, I think. I mean, Ma- _kun_ might’ve found some palatial estate to stay in for the night.”

Akane slammed the drawer shut with more force than was necessary and straightened up. “What did you say?”

Morgana’s fur bristled, but Akechi didn’t rise to the edge in Akane’s voice. “Only that there really isn’t much point in worrying, is there? But of course Go- _san_ would worry anyway, what with all the publicity he got from the Kaneshiro case. I imagine he’s thinking of all sorts of awful things the remaining yakuza might do in response…they’re the ones who gave him all those scars, you know. And the reason they don’t have their father anymore. Not that anyone could _prove_ either of those cases, of course, but what people know and what could be proven don’t always line up.”

She’d had enough of whatever this was. Akane stalked up behind her and turned Akechi around with a hand on her shoulder, leaving them so close that Akane’s toes bumped into Akechi’s shoes. “What do you want from me, Mitsue?” she asked, hoping to throw her off with the sheer informality of her tone.

Nothing was going her way today, it seemed. Rather than recoil in surprise, Akechi cupped Akane’s cheeks in both hands and drew her face closer, until Akane could feel the hot roll of her breath on her lips. Her thumbs stroked gently over Akane’s cheekbones, pushing the frames of her glasses out of the way and making the little hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. “My sole interest is in uncovering the truth,” she said in a soft voice.

“Akechi- _san_ , let’s go, I want to stop by that koban on the next street,” Niijima said from the bottom of the stairs.

Akane was doing her best to keep from shaking as Akechi stepped back and flashed her that subtle smile she used on television. “Well. You have my number, please do get in touch if you hear from Ma- _kun_ ,” she said, then swept a hand toward the shelves. “Or any time, really, I’d just _love_ to go with you to get another…memento to commemorate your time in Tokyo. Good night, Akane- _san_.”

The chime of the bell over the door marked their departure, and Akane wasted no time in gagging at the lingering, skin-crawling ghosts of Akechi’s hands on her. She cut over to the window to make sure they were really leaving, and only sighed in relief when she saw her and Niijima heading down the alley alongside Sakura. Akane sat at the foot of her bed, suddenly even more exhausted. “She knows.”

“Yeah. _Palatial_ , _memento_ …she didn’t use those words by accident.” Morgana hopped up on the bed and nuzzled into Akane’s side. “Are you all right?”

“If I didn’t think I’d collapse halfway down the stairs, I’d go to the baths and scrub myself raw.”

As it was, Akane settled for changing into her pajamas and brushing her teeth to try and drown out the scent of Akechi’s perfume with peppermint. It wasn’t enough that they had to deal with Medjed by pinning all their hopes on a hikikomori they’d never even seen, now their number one critic had her in her crosshairs. “What are we going to do about her?” Morgana asked when Akane returned to the bed and shut the light. It hardly made a difference with the lamppost outside, and combined with the cicadas chirping she wondered how she would get any sleep if she wasn’t ready to pass out to begin with.

“Right now? Nothing. We’re not exactly working with a surplus of free time here.” Akane tapped her chest, and felt Morgana settle in on top of her a moment later. She idly stroked her cat’s back and tucked her glasses away. “Figures that this would come up right when we can’t do a single thing about it. How would she even know about the cognitive world? Did she somehow get a hold of Souyou’s mother’s research?”

“Hey, you don’t think…that other Metaverse user that Madarame and Kaneshiro’s shadows were talking about…?”

Her blood chilled. “Can’t worry about that now, get some sleep. Great, I’m starting to sound like you.”

⁂

“All we’re here for today is Makoto. No requests, no training. We head right to Chemdah and find a way into this redoubt. Skull, Panther, and Fox are with me, Mona will hang back for transport and healing. I got Takemi- _sensei_ to open up a little early today, so we have plenty of boosts if we need them. Everyone ready?”

Akane looked at her team as her freshly fused personas coursed through her menpo mask, loaded down with everything she could think of to counteract Johanna’s skills. Everyone nodded, and that was that. They descended the broken escalator from the Mementos entrance, steeling themselves for whatever might come their way.

“Well, they probably won’t be hard to find,” Ryuji said, kicking at a scuff mark running parallel to the tracks. The walls and floors of Mementos were far from neat and orderly, but now it looked as though bombs had gone off through the winding halls, ripping up whole sections of track and caving in some of the dead ends. It gave them something of a path to follow, though Akane had to wonder if they had structural integrity to worry about. “I never realized Johanna was so powerful…do you think Casanova could burn this place down if I lost control of him?”

“Let’s hope we never find out.” They piled into the bus once Morgana had transformed, taking a slow, cautious approach to avoid as many fights as they could and save their strength. Only, there didn’t seem to be all that many fights to avoid. Where the corridors were usually choked with shadows on their early-morning excursions, now it was a task to even see one, and the few they did pass retreated at the sound of Morgana’s engine. Akane leaned back in her seat and sped up a bit. “I know none of this is real, but seeing the aftermath of a bunch of nuclear explosions leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

“It _has_ cost Mementos what little twisted beauty it had,” Yusuke said, training her rifle on a nearby shadow through the window.

“Not what I meant, Fox.”

Their descent into Chemdah was the most uneventful any trip had ever been, and they were all the more on edge for it. The destruction grew more and more pronounced as they approached the sixth floor, with whole sections of the ground ripped up and made impossible to drive over. “This has to be it,” Akane said as she put Morgana in park. “All right, everybody out, the bus won’t get through here. Anyone else feel that?”

“The air’s all fucked up,” Ann said. She tapped the end of her club against one of the rails that had been curled in on itself. “It’s not really an electric charge like I make, or hot or cold…feels broken.”

“Like there’s weight to it,” Ryuji added.

“Let’s find the source point for the distortion and get going. Group up tight, Fox and Mona will cover the rear. And watch the shadows, there’s no telling how this is going to affect them the closer we get.”

A few of the braver shadows did try and waylay them, but they fell easily before putting up any real fight. Akane was wiping away a splotch of whatever ichor they were made of when they found what they were looking for. The cratered ground and walls swirled into one another in the corridor, and the stagnant air became a rushing wind around them, pushing them back from the veil of black and red they would have to pass through.

“Johanna really doesn’t want us inside,” Akane said, and tore her mask away. “Ishikori-dome!”

Her persona swirled into being beside her, towering over all of them put together. She held up her mirror, and in an instant the wind was blowing in the other direction, almost pulling them off their feet and into the vortex. “Jump!”

Akane grabbed Morgana as she flew by and into the distortion, holding her tight as they tumbled over and over through the lacuna between Mementos and the redoubt. The darkness grew so thick around them that Akane couldn’t see anything, and the howl of the wind tossing them about blocked out anything the others might have been trying to say.

They landed hard on solid ground after what had to be minutes, sprawling out and groaning as they recovered. Akane removed her mask to catch her breath and nearly gagged. “What is that _smell_?”

Yusuke got up to all fours and retched, losing the coffee he’d arrived with that morning. “God, it’s like the changing room at the gym,” Ann said, holding her nose as she stood up. “Well—look around.”

It _was_ a changing room, or at least Johanna’s warped perception of one. Rows and rows of lockers stretched out in front of them, forming a maze that seemed to take up the bulk of the massive space. Even without any readily apparent source, the whole place punched them in the nose with the stench of sweat and body odor. Shadows growled and rumbled from within the labyrinth, while closer by was the sound of a running sink.

“Watch your corners,” Akane said, and reached back to produce her naginata. They crept toward an alcove in the wall where the noise seemed to be coming from, before Akane peered slowly around the edge. It certainly looked like Makoto at the sink, wearing only the pants and boots from his thief outfit while running a razor under the water at a sink, but it wasn’t him, not really. The bright yellow eyes in the mirror were proof enough of that. “Johanna.”

She glanced their way as Akane emerged from behind the wall, then went back to checking the mirror. “You shouldn’t be here,” Johanna said, dragging the razor down her cheek. Her voice was an unnerving blend of Makoto’s and a higher trill, like knives dragged across piano strings. Despite already having a clean face, she kept sweeping the razor over her skin until she was bleeding from each stroke. Akane grimaced. “She doesn’t want you here.”

For the moment she seemed docile, scornfully uninterested in them as they drew a few steps closer. “I think it’s _you_ that doesn’t want us here,” Akane said.

“I want what Makoto wants. I am her, and she is me.” Johanna gingerly touched the bloodied parts of her face, dragged her fingers through them until they were red, and then licked them clean. Ryuji bit back a gag behind Akane. “And why _would_ I want you here? You’re responsible for this, after all. Maybe she had to carve away pieces of herself to keep from standing out, but she could have muddled through until college. Found some place that wouldn’t treat her like garbage. Then _you_ come along—”

The razor in her hand coalesced into Makoto’s mask, gripped in her hand as she walked up to them. “—and start poking and prodding and putting all sorts of ideas in her head. What difference does it make to you? People talk behind your back all the time, the hick from Kyoto who’s always one wrong look away from snapping, so you’re inured to it. But her hearing someone call her a freak? She was begging for my help. For my protection.”

“How is this helping?” Ann asked, waving her club around. “Nearly killing us in Souyou’s palace and then blowing Mementos half to hell?”

“This is abandonment, not protection,” Yusuke said.

Johanna took the upper half of her outfit, draped over the door of a toilet stall, and slipped it on. By the time she pulled her head through the neck hole, the blood was gone, and with her eyes closed it was impossible to tell her apart from Makoto. “Why do you insist on involving yourselves? Go home. Makoto cares about you, so I’d rather not kill you, but I will if I have to.” She drew Makoto’s revolver and spun the barrel a few times. “I won’t let you take her away. She’s safe here.”

“Please, Makoto is our friend,” Ryuji said with a few careful steps forward. Ann tried to reach out and stop him, but Yusuke held her back. “Human beings aren’t meant to stay here, you know that. And this place isn’t safe, it’s crawling with shadows.”

“Do you think I can’t protect her?” Johanna asked, tucking the gun away and hooking her fingers into the collar of Ryuji’s outfit. He tensed, and Morgana made a growling, hissing sound.

“No, I don’t doubt that, I’ve seen what you can do…Johanna, this might feel like some definition of _safe_ , but we—being hurt is just a part of life, you can’t hide away whenever it happens. The good comes along with the bad, keeping Makoto down here will only make it so that she can’t have either.”

Johanna wavered for a moment, frowning and knitting her brow together, then pulled Ryuji closer to crash her lips against his. He yelped, unable to get out of her grip, while Akane and Yusuke had to restrain Ann and Morgana. The back of his neck was as red as his outfit when she finally let him go, idly touching her lips while Ryuji moved safely behind Akane. “That was better than she thought it would be.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Akane tore her mask away and summoned her Mithras, prompting everyone else to ready themselves. Johanna sneered. “Where’s Makoto?”

All the guns trained on her didn’t seem to faze Johanna a bit as she walked through their group, to one of the openings in the locker maze. She rested a gloved hand on the corner of one locker, crumpling the metal as if it was nothing more than paper. “If you want to get yourselves killed, I won’t stop you. It would honestly save me the trouble. She’s at the center. And I’ll be there with her, waiting while you wear yourselves down.”

She turned around the first corner, but by the time Akane hurried after her, she was already gone. Akane kicked at the wall of lockers, but the threshold for deforming them was well past what she could muster. “We don’t have the time for this,” she said, and tried to open one of the lockers. If they could get on top of the walls, it would at least save them the fights with the shadows lurking about. Pulling the latch did nothing, though, and her attempts to climb the wall were fruitless. When she had Ryuji give her a boost up, the wall simply grew to keep the top out of reach. “Fuck…fine. Stay against the left-hand wall. I’d try blowing them up, but we don’t have the stamina to burn. Same formation as earlier.”

“It’s worrying to think that our own personas could do something like this,” Yusuke said as they ventured into the maze. “I wonder if Erniang would make a museum for me, like Madarame’s…?”

“Fox, focus. Please.”

It was impossible to let their guard down with the constant press of sounds from the shadows around them, never knowing whether they were safely behind an impassable wall or lurking around a corner. Akane’s hands shook all the while, one on the wall to her left and one wrapped around her gun. It was almost a relief to spy a shadow and dispatch it, earning a brief respite from their groans, until more popped up to take its place.

“How is this worse than a real palace,” Ann muttered when she took point. “It’s like the whole place is bearing down on us. Like it _knows_ we’re here.”

“Johanna is Makoto’s shadow, it would make sense that she knows how these things work as much as Makoto does. She actively tried to create it, too.” Ryuji groaned when they turned down the next corridor and found it to be exactly the same as the last eight. “Plus, _keep Makoto safe_ is a much more concrete desire than something like lust or gluttony. And maybe being a shadow herself gives her more control?”

“Well aren’t you just so knowledgeable and cozy with her,” Ann said.

“Are you laboring under the delusion that I enjoy it when girls do things like that?”

Ann grumbled. “Enough chatter,” Akane said. They could have one of their spats when they weren’t in the middle of an operation. “There’s one, eight meters ahead in that nook there.”

All the shadows Johanna had managed to press into her service seemed to be weak to nothing but nuclear attacks, leaving Akane scrambling to field something with the necessary skills. This was no proper palace, there were no safe areas and no popping back to the entrance to fuse more personas—and the creeping suspicion that the labyrinth would merely shift like the rest of Mementos if they left removed the option of returning to the entrance anyway. Akane twirled her last two atom matches between her fingers as they walked.

“Hey, Joker…how long have you known about all of this? With Makoto?” Ann asked.

“Hmm? I don’t know, since before the summer break. Why?”

“Just curious,” she said. “You know, because you two didn’t exactly have the smoothest start, so I’m wondering why it was you who found all this out.”

Akane tossed one of her spent shells down the hall to see if it attracted any shadows. “It’s not like we sat down to exchange deep dark secrets, I kind of pressed the issue about going to the baths in Yongen and it…went from there. None of you should feel insulted for not being confided in or anything. Wait, hold still.”

They all came to a halt behind her. Akane stood stock-still for a moment, then cupped her hands together over the wall to their right. Someone crying, someone else offering reassurances. She pointed toward the apparent source of the sound and then to the next right-hand turn. “I can hear them,” she said quietly, taking out her gun to check that it was loaded.

“You told us to hug the left wall,” Yusuke said.

“And now I’m thinking there’s a good chance Johanna knows that trick. This place went up in the course of a few hours, there’s no telling how stable it is or how long it’ll last.” Akane produced her naginata and carved an arrow into the ground. “If this guess doesn’t pan out, we’ll know where to come back to now.”

For the first time, they seemed reluctant to follow her. Akane removed her mask so she could speak without it muffling her words. “This, all of this—it’s my fault. Johanna was right about that. I won’t force any of you to come along, you could get out easily by going along the same wall. But I’m following my gut here. I can’t face Niijima again without bringing Makoto back to him.”

The shadows grew more numerous and tenacious after going off-course, but at least she had her team with her. Akane burned through her last few nuclear damage dealers on a pair of Kaiwan, forcing them to either dart between hiding spots or fall into battles of attrition with what shadows they couldn’t avoid. Even with plenty of coffee and curry to go around, they were all flagging when the walls lost their clean rectangular lines and took on a circular shape instead. The restrained sobbing was a constant accompaniment to their footsteps now, each cracking sound twisting at Akane’s heart. When the last Yaksini dissolved into dust, they approached the opening to the innermost ring, bracing for another fight.

Only, Johanna didn’t seem interested in fighting. Not yet, anyway. Instead she sat seiza on the floor, looking down and softly stroking Makoto’s head, resting in her lap. She sighed. “I suppose I should give you credit, I thought you’d be in there a lot longer,” Johanna said as Makoto shuddered beneath her. “There, there, darling…must you keep interfering? You don’t need her. Go home, go deal with Sakura’s palace yourselves, I don’t care. Just leave us be.”

“There’s nothing to eat here,” Morgana said with a step forward. “Nothing humans can eat, anyway. No food and no water. Staying here more than a day or two is a death sentence.”

Johanna stared at her, lips curling into a frown. “I would have thought _you_ , of all of them, would understand how it feels to have the world tell you that you’re something you aren’t. She’ll have no peace in that world, not within and not without. Isn’t this kinder, a few days where she can be her true self rather than being forced into a lie for the rest of her life…?”

“We’re not leaving without her,” Akane said through a growl. Makoto twitched and trembled in Johanna’s lap. All of their personas spun into being, bearing down on the rogue shadow in the small space. “You belong at Makoto’s side, not making palaces to keep her trapped. Now end this.”

Johanna’s brow knitted in frustration, staring up at Ishikori-dome looming over all the other personas, then gave Makoto’s shoulder a quick pat. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” she said, and gently extricated herself so she could stand. “Go ahead, shoot me. You know how much pain feedback you get when your personas take hits for you. The shock will kill Makoto before you destroy me. Is that what you want, with all your self-righteous talk? It’s only unfortunate that I don’t have the same compunctions against hurting _you_.”

The air grew charged and hot around them, crackling with energy ready to be unleashed. “Joker, what’re we doing here,” Ann said, backing up along with Ching Shih. Bolts of plasma arced between spots on Johanna’s outfit and the floor around her. Akane readied the strongest reflective skill she had, wondering if would be enough to protect them all in such confined quarters—

“Johanna.”

She powered down in an instant, whirling on one heel to the voice behind her. Makoto had gotten to her feet where she could stare her shadow in the face, each an uncanny mirror of the other. Johanna hesitated, looking between Makoto and their interlopers, before retreating to Makoto. “They can’t…they can’t keep you safe like I can,” she said, resting her hands on Makoto’s shoulders.

“I know. I know what you were trying to do, and I appreciate it. But they’re right, I can’t stay here, this isn’t my world. And Go- _nii_ - _san_ must be worried by now. So come back to me, please. We shouldn’t be separated like this.”

Johanna remained silent, shoulders slumping, then stepped back and wreathed herself in so much light that they were all forced to look away. When it faded, she had reverted to her motorcycle state, engine softly revving. “Is that what you wish?” she asked, her voice simply appearing in their minds without a mouth to make it. “Their world? The same pain that made you beg for respite, writ over and over?”

“Yes, it is. I can’t shut out pain without doing the same to everything else. I just…have to do my best to take it all as it comes to me. But hiding away like this isn’t the answer.”

The hum of her engine died, replaced by a mechanical _whir_. Johanna’s chassis split and unfolded along a seam in the middle, allowing a vaguely humanoid body as tall as Ishikori-dome to emerge and stand over Makoto. “Remember your defiance well,” she said, kneeling down to touch Makoto’s cheek. “Only call on me, your rebel’s heart, in your times of need. For I am you, and you are me.”

Her mechanical body dissolved once more into bursts of light that coalesced into Makoto’s mask, coming to rest on her face as her clothes burned away in favor of her thief outfit. She staggered, quickly caught by Akane rushing toward her. “You’re all right, take a minute to get your bearings,” she said, pulling Makoto into an embrace. “Glad we got you back…Queen.”

The others crushed in around them, and Makoto yelped when Ryuji joined in. “What? What’s the matter?” he asked, looking down to see if his whip had come loose.

“Nothing, I just…everything Johanna did while we were separated is coming back to me,” she said, her face turning a bright red. “I’m sorry for her jumping on you like that.”

He shrugged it off. “Don’t worry about it. Only—do you think you could get her back out here to show us the way through this maze?”

“No need. Like she said, we’re one and the same.” Makoto wriggled out of their hugs and went to one of the walls to press her hand to the cold metal. All the locker doors around them rattled and flew open, leaving only the skeleton of the labyrinth to navigate around. All the lurking shadows scattered, disappearing into dark corners where they wouldn’t be a problem. “There.”

“Good. Better start thinking of what you want to tell your brother though, he was at the shop last night,” Akane said. Makoto nodded as they began to walk.

⁂

Leblanc seemed to have been turned into some kind of staging ground when they returned, with one of the booths given over entirely to a large map of the city that Niijima and Akechi were poring over in between bites of curry. So focused were they on their planning that Niijima didn’t even look up when they walked in, though Akechi did. She smiled, and Akane’s stomach turned. “Go- _san_ , I think we can put these away.”

“What? Why? We haven’t—”

He turned to where Akechi was looking, then almost tripped over himself to shimmy out of the booth and get to Makoto. “Oh God, you’re all right,” he said breathlessly, pulling Makoto into the tightest hug Akane had seen since coming to Tokyo. Relived sobs wracked through his body, leaving him to blink tears down onto Makoto’s head. Ann, Ryuji and Yusuke snuck past them and crept upstairs to give them some semblance of privacy. “You’re so grounded…where have you _been_?”

“I guess I lost track of time,” Makoto said, returning her brother’s hug until they finally pulled apart. Akechi quietly produced Niijima’s cane for him so he wasn’t leaning on the back of their booth. “My phone died, so I was wandering around for a while until Kurusu—until Akane found me. But I had some time to think, and…could we go home? There’s something I need to talk about with you privately.”

“Yeah, all right.” Niijima looked past Makoto for a moment and smiled, really smiled, at Akane. “Thank you, Kurusu- _san_.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Good work, kid,” Sakura said from behind his grouchy smile. “I’ll bring up some curry for you all in a bit.”

Rather than stand there and lap up any more praise, Akane slipped past them and made for her room, only to feel a tug on the back of her shirt. When she turned around, Akechi was standing far too close at the foot of her stairs, wearing her fake television smile. “We really need to have a talk about personal space, Akechi- _san_ ,” Akane muttered, planting a hand on Akechi’s shoulder to push her back.

“A nice private talk, I would hope.” Despite being moved in no uncertain terms, Akechi grinned and cocked her head a little closer. “Thank you for your help, Go- _san_ was about to go out of his mind with worry. And Ma- _kun_ seems fine, so I suppose this has all ended well. Where was he, out of curiosity? Down in the subway?”

Morgana popped out of Akane’s bag and stood up on her shoulder, staring down Akechi alongside her. “Something like that.”

Akechi swept some hair from her face and shrugged. “Oh, very well, don’t tell me. I won’t keep you from your friends any longer, I’m sure you’d all like to rest on the laurels of a successful operation. I’m sure they were…instrumental in helping find Ma- _kun_ , weren’t they? Until next time, Akane- _san_.”

She hurried out to follow Niijima and Makoto, leaving Akane grimacing as she climbed her stairs. All the lauding that had stroked her ego turned to ash in her gut as she remembered their very much still extant issue. Yusuke had claimed her bed, sitting across it while Ryuji and Ann sprawled out on the couch.

“What’s the matter?” Ann asked, trying to pull the television remote from Ryuji’s grip to see who would decide their viewing habits for the day. “You don’t look very happy with all that congratulating you were getting. We’ll get back to dealing with Souyou- _chan_ ’s palace tomorrow, don’t worry.”

“It’s not that.” Akane glanced back down the stairs to make sure they weren’t being listened to, then drew closer to her friends to speak in a whisper anyway. “We have a problem.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading! If you liked this, you may be interested in some of my other _Persona_ work:
> 
> [A Portrait of the Shogi Player as a Young Woman](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11805870) – Yusuke and Hifumi’s Valentine’s date.
> 
> [Empress’s Justice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15770388) – Haru goes back and finds a fatally wounded Akechi in Shido’s palace.
> 
> [Fool’s Judgment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14370858/chapters/33177117) – The lead-up to, and aftermath of, Sae’s palace if she and Joker were dating.
> 
> [I Guess This Sort of Thing Really Does Happen…](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11855355) – Sae stashes Joker at Kawakami’s place following the interrogation.
> 
> [Kintsukuroi](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14760477/chapters/34131807) – Some scenes from a setting where Sae and Yusuke are an item.
> 
> [Our Last Private Moments](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16092479) (Persona 3) – Theo and his guest's last date.
> 
> [Temperance, pǝʇɹǝʌuI](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15355578/chapters/35631108) – Genderswapped Temperance confidant, featuring a romantic bent and my rabid little honey badger of a female protagonist, Akane.
> 
> [Sense Memory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16536104) – Yusuke, whose world comes to him in impressionistic bursts and flashes, wonders if he's good enough at all to be part of the Phantom Thieves. Shukita.
> 
> [Singles’ Retreat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556390) – Rather than tag along with any of their friends in relationships, Haru rents out a ryokan for herself, Ryuji and Yusuke for a week. What ever shall they do to keep themselves busy? (Yusuke/Haru/Ryuji, incredibly NSFW)
> 
> [Weekends in Shibuya](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11697408) – A little future Sae/Joker piece I did for a friend when they were sick.


End file.
